U.S. Charges Huawei

The Justice Department unsealed criminal charges against China’s most
important telecommunications company on Monday in a deepening of the
ongoing geopolitical chill across the Pacific Ocean.

Acting
Attorney General Matthew Whitaker said Huawei has been indicted on 13
criminal counts and that he is requesting that Canada extradite its
chief financial officer, Meng Wanzhou, who was arrested in Vancouver on
Dec. 1 on a U.S. warrant.

Meng was released on bail but she hasn’t been able to leave Canada given the expectation that Washington might ask to put her on trial. The Wall Street Journal reported last April that the Justice Department was investigating Huawei for potentially violating U.S. sanctions on Iran.

Whitaker said that Huawei has been trying to steal American
telecommunications technology and also lying about its relationship with
its Iranian subsidiary. The Chinese parent company claimed that it had
sold its Iranian division, he said, when actually it had kept control
and ownership of it.

That meant that American banks doing
business with Huawei were inadvertently violating American restrictions
on economic activity linked to Iran.

The Trump administration
appears to have decided to make an example of Meng. She is not only a
top corporate officer. She is the daughter of the founder of Huawei,
which is one of China’s most important global brands and seen as an arm
of its power around the world.

The announcement on Monday was the latest example of the Justice Department raising the alarm over what it calls the loss of billions of dollars’ worth of American intellectual property to Chinese cyber-theft.

U.S. and allied intelligence officials also fear that Huawei’s
technology helps with Chinese government espionage. It has been barred
from selling network equipment in countries leery about Beijing’s
ambitions.

“As Americans, we should all be concerned by the
potential for any company beholden to a foreign government – especially
one that doesn’t share our values – to burrow into the American
telecommunications market,” said FBI Director Christopher Wray. “That
kind of access could give a foreign government the capacity to
maliciously modify or steal information, conduct undetected espionage,
or exert pressure or control.”

Beijing is expected to condemn
the announcement. The Chinese government already has responded to Meng’s
arrest by taking a number of Canadians into custody and applying
pressure onto its relationship with Ottawa.

So far, the government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has held fast, although cracks lately have begun to appear.

Trudeau fired Ottawa’s ambassador to China after the envoy mused
about the case that Meng might make to keep from being extradited to the
United States and about how much better for Canada it might be if the
United States dropped its extradition request.

Canada’s foreign minister said the former ambassador’s comments had made it untenable for him to remain in his job, according to Reuters.

With
sanctions and the threat of more economic restrictions, President Trump
has sought to pressure China into accepting broader concessions in the
bilateral trading relationship.

A delegation from China is
expected in Washington as part of the ongoing trade dispute but White
House press secretary Sarah Sanders said on Monday that the charges
announced at the Justice Department are not a negotiation tactic.

“It’s a totally separate process,” she said.

Whitaker also was asked about the broader bilateral situation between
the United States and China. He said the Department of Justice acts
independently from the White House and it had arrived at the need to
charge Huawei as the result of its own investigations.

Canadian
officials also have sought to separate themselves from the U.S.-China
tensions, arguing there’s no cause for China to detain the Canadians it
has taken into custody since Meng’s arrest.

China’s ambassador to Canada shot back earlier this month that Ottawa is guilty of “white supremacy”
and of applying a double standard in asking for its citizens to be free
while Meng remained unable to travel and subject to extradition to the
United States.